Although I had a couple of opportunities to do so, I actually never drove on the right side of the car and/or left side of the road the first time I was over here, almost two years. I bummed rides or walked or bussed or trained everywhere and that actually worked out very well for me, being car free. I hate driving even when I know what side of the road I’m supposed to be on, so no surprise that I would not be very keen to venture on to the other (wrong) side. Still, though, the new job—which, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh, starts on Tuesday OMG my last day of unemployment is tomorrow OMG aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh—needs me to drive, so to drive I was determined to learn.
Fortunately for me I already know how to drive a car on at least one side, so I figured it would be pretty easy to learn to drive on the other.
Here I am at Lyall Bay on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, having promised to cook my friend Pete dinner if he would lend me his car and sit in it while I practiced.
Putting the key in the ignition was the easy part—putting my seat belt on backwards was hard.
The driving part went pretty well, except I had to narrate aloud everything I was doing in order to focus: “Okay NOW the light is RED so that means I STOP and now the light is GREEN so that means I GO and whoops that’s not the indicator that’s the windshield wiper and whooooooaaaaa that was kind of a close one there Pete, huh, right? Oh hang on NOW the light is RED so I STOP and then I’m going to turn RIGHT so I put my signal on DAMMIT THAT’S THE WINDSHIELD WIPER AGAIN” and so on and so forth.
Fortunately though it was a gorgeous summer day and Pete was very patient with the whole exercise, mentioning only briefly that I might want to work on my roundabout skills a little.
I managed to park the car correctly and a good time was had by all and now when I start my new job in aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh two days aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh I’ll at least be able to say I have physically driven a car in New Zealand at least once, even if I don’t completely understand all the give way rules quuuuuiiiiiittttttee yet. It ended up being much easier than I had expected.
I’m still really glad to be here but it’s been a weird weekend; I’m really worried about how I’m going to get through the next couple of weeks financially speaking and I’m moving into a new flat with some new people I don’t know on Wednesday and I felt old and frumpy and unattractive last night when I went out in my new going-out top and I’m a little nervous about the new job and I feel embarrassed that all I want right now is my own bed in my own room that I can decorate however I like, like that’s what my dreams are right now: not adventure and romance and daring, but a steady job with a paycheck and a ticket to Homegrown maybe a nice hot chocolate later on in the evening. I know it’s going to even out, I know it was the right decision to come back here—it’s just been a tough, ill-fitting, antsy day. It was nice, yesterday, to feel like I was doing something right, even if I did end up getting the windshield extra clean instead of indicating left a couple of times.